


From September Third, 1940

by meatglue



Category: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children - Ransom Riggs
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Coming of Age, Enemies to Lovers, Everyone Has Issues, Everyone Is Gay, Everyone is Dead, F/F, F/M, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Lovers to Friends, Sexuality Crisis, Slow Burn, World War II
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:14:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28313625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meatglue/pseuds/meatglue
Summary: AU Fanfic about life in the loop before Jacob. The children don't escape Cairnholm and Miss Peregrine's loop is destroyed.When it happened, it was 2018 for normals and September third, 1940 for them. As it usually is, all day, every day.The end is imminent for Miss Alma Peregrine's idyllic loop, after a Wight rendered the the poor ymbryne unable to rewind time. The threat of German bomber aircrafts loomed relentlessly, and quite literally, overhead. The helpless children had a bleak choice to make by midnight: to die of bombing, or of old age overnight, letting stolen time ravage their bodies into dust.It is a tale as old a time to peculiarfolks, told through the musings of Leticia Kaffenberg, a girl who brings about rot at the touch of her fingers. We watch as life in the loop unfolds - from joyous talks over dinner to times of anguish, clandestine romances by the sea to bouts of bored sadism.Through this book, the esteemed Miss Esmeralda Avocet seeks to do their story justice by adapting Miss Kaffenberg's journal and adding relevant photographs to further immerse readers in tales from the tragic loop.See the story on wattpad for pictures :)https://my.w.tt/99SRGs0fvcb
Relationships: Emma Bloom/Original Female Character(s), Enoch O'Connor/Original Character(s), Enoch O'Connor/Original Female Character(s)
Kudos: 1





	1. A Foreword from Miss Esmeralda Avocet

By means of either word of mouth or secondary grade Syndrigast History courses, peculiar folks must somewhat know of this monumental piece of our past, but where to truly begin when discussing the life and times of Miss Alma Peregrine's loop?

I am certain you have seen the untouched remnants of their home just hours after the loop decayed in 2018, perhaps in postcards or textbooks, maybe even in real life - the wreck is somewhat of a pilgrimage site for peculiars now. All the same, most depictions of the scene show a time-worn house, damaged by a gaping hole where a bomb had struck. 

One detail is often omitted, however. I was there for the first excavation, and just outside of the loop threshold were bone dust and fragments, doubtless belonging to the wards of Miss Alma Peregrine. Seeing their remains, us ymbrynes wept for weeks on end.

It is a story that tells itself quite lucidly. An unfortunate loop placement and timing, an incapacitated ymbryne, and most heart-rending of all, the relinquishing of long-lived lives.

There are many more misfortunes like this across our history, of course. What sets this one apart is its beautiful chronicling, by virtue of one Miss Leticia Kaffenberg's journal entries. This journal of hers, found among remains, intimately details goings-on in the loop, from her arrival to the loop's eventual collapse. It is like no diary I have ever read - seeming drafted and redrafted into prosaicness, laden with vivid imageries and full of character. Readers are bound to fancy themselves another friend of the children's. 

Or so I thought. Despite her journal, some peculiars are still able to detach themselves from this tragedy. As can be seen; my Syndrigast History students in the ymbryne academy write essays on the event with an inherent stoicism and matter-of-factness. Such is the case for my compassionate ymbrynes-to-be, let alone less solemn peculiar folks.

Why is this? Shouldn't the tragedy hold sentimental value? Shouldn't it be memorialized as a microcosm of the peculiar toils and troubles?

I, being once an escort to one of Miss Alma Peregrine's wards and a long-time acquaintance of the ymbryne herself, was severely affected by the loop's collapse. This, understandably, may not be the case for more youthful and more culturally distant peculiars. Their story bears virtually no weight. Some say, "unknown, unloved."

So is why I have taken into my own hands the task of passing on their legacy. What follows are select entries from Miss Kaffenberg's journal, chosen, revised and pictorialized by yours truly as to broaden her words' reach in the Peculiardom. After everything, I encourage you, dear reader, to ponder the history and courage of our kind once more, and strive ever more relentlessly to make real the future these children longed to see. 

\- Miss Esmeralda Avocet of Derbyshire on July 15th, 1867, September 16th, 2017

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First chapter down fellas please give me feedback :)))
> 
> Btw I post this exact fic on wattpad and it has vintage photos there in case you wanna see (link in fic description)
> 
> #plug


	2. The News

_Swansea, September 6th or 7th. I lost count. ___

____

____

I woke to the quietest ruckus today. It came from downstairs, directly below my floor, where Misses Thrush and Nightjar were gossiping in whispers. Nightjar spoke with her usual derision while genteel Thrush breathed her words, now and then hushing her companion futilely. 

Nightly cricket chirps abounded, gleeful of the loop's eternal late spring. The room's paper-thin curtain was an opaque black in the still fragile sunlight and the usual clamour of Swansea commute hadn't yet come.

It was annoying of them to natter that early; I would have gone back to bed and forced myself to sleep, had the tearing of envelopes not caught my attention. 

You see, I had been waiting for news of my family. While the birds insisted I start simply getting by without them, I know better than to blindly believe such recluses. 

"Outsiders are dangerous to us. They hate the odd," they said. How cultish.

These people - ymbrynes, they called themselves - fancy making every one of their wards think themselves romantic, tortured souls, hated by norms everywhere. They harboured an ironic prejudice towards every single non-peculiar, including Ma and the boys. I was delighted to meet fellow oddballs, of course, but so long as these two try to include me in their victim charade, I can't love where I am. 

Besides, Ma herself said I was the beacon of the family. Children bright enough for medical education don't come a dime a dozen, she said. With the boys still young and air-headed, it was foolish to forgo me "in favour of a securer life" - Nightjar's words - after 18 otherwise fine years with my 'peculiarity'. Ma was anything but foolish. 

My room, flush with their study downstairs and sloppily floored, proved to be an excellent eavesdropping site. Every word sounded crisp where slender fissures gashed the floor. I don't know what I expected to witness - the two comically conspiring to tell Ma I had died? Evil laughter, as they throw their letters for me into the hearth? Regardless, I transcript their exchange as I write, flat on my stomach with an ear on the musty floor:

"... her utter selfishness. For Heaven's sake, wasn't it her sixtieth birthday some weeks ago? To resign from ymbryne duties because of a Silver Fox...," Nightjar was saying.

"Prudence, will you let it go! She is a fine woman," Miss Thrush said, her tone of a pious grandmother in a blue film premiere. 

"I must say you befit my name more than I do," scoffed Nightjar, before opening another letter with an unsatisfying rip, "This is the last one, from Avocet's golden girl."

"Oh, stop being bitter. Go on, read it."

A moment of quiet as Nightjar skimmed the letter.

"She has made her loop. In that little house in Cairnholm." 

"So sudden?"

"Because the Jerries bombed the place. I mean to say, she enlooped the house the moment a bomb dropped above it. Good God, is she daft? Those poor children!" blabbered Nightjar, growing shriller and shriller with each word. 

"Oh, dear...." Thrush sighed. 

"Is that all you have to say, Miss? One of these days, Thrush, you ought to quit your Queen of England act."

The pair debated hotly for a long moment, Thrush launching into a lecture on decorum and propriety as Nightjar resumed her badmouthing. Torpor hazed my mind once more. I contemplated sleep until, like a backhand across the face, Thrush mentioned my name: 

"And about Leticia. She is leaving for certain, then?"

"Ah. Yes, her. I guess so. You should bear the news, she isn't fond of me."

"Neither you nor I, Prudence," Thrush laughed airily as she started towards the staircase. 

They were sending me away! What small twinge of remorse I felt for being bad-mannered disappeared. How thin-skinned were they, to boot me out just because of that? They were caretakers, weren't they? All that talk of welcoming me into the home, of not having to hide my true nature anymore, discarded. I was insulted more than anything else. 

The indignant train of thought broke upon hearing the dull thumps of Thrush's cane on wood. In a flurry of paper, ink and nightdress, I peeled myself from the floor and into bed, feigning a harassed look when the door swung open with a loud whine. 

"Good morning, Miss Kaffenberg," she said, peering in, head appearing disembodied in the weak dawn, "May I come in?"

"Good morning. It's quite early, Miss Thrush."

"Apologies, Leticia. I ought to tell you something privately. I know you dislike being called for in front of your peers."

"Oh, alright then. Please, have a seat."

She did, stumbling in with her pole of a cane. It was a charming thing - a tall sliver of alabaster, bulky with Corinthian ornaments on either end, like a miniature Parthenon column whittled at its middle. While others bursted a vein just to prop the thing up, it was essentially another limb to Thrush.

We met three months ago a dingy alleyway where a white-eyed crook had cornered me with a sawed-off pistol. I turned my pockets inside out to show him I had nothing to give, plead tearfully for my life, but he kept on advancing. I thought I had no choice but to use my heinous peculiarity when, like a cryptid, Thrush appeared nude in a shower of little grey feathers and that cane in hand. 

What ensued was a bizarre sight - a stark-naked octogenarian combating a Nosferatu doppelganger with such speed and ferocity, her cane whizzing like spokes on a wheel and him diabolically screeching every time a hit landed. 

Eventually, he fled with ten dozen bruises blooming Begonia-like under collar. She let him go after mulling it over, then turned to me and said, so nonchalantly, "Come, dear, I will explain everything."

I was gobsmacked, as you would be. I didn't ask a single question as the grime-ridden walls melted into a passageway where she had pressed a loose brick, too busy thanking the Heavens umpteen times over that I didn't have to rot the man in self-defence. She led me into the flat and revealed, among other things, that we had miraculously journeyed from 1940 to 1901. The rest is history.

Thrush now sat facing me on a spindly chair pulled from beside the dressing table, hands cupped primly on her lap. 

"You might have noticed, Miss Kaffenberg, that our loop houses peculiars in more, ah, difficult circumstances. Peculiars do need adjustments to live with ease, though not typically to the extent of everything you have seen so far."

In fact, I hadn't. This was news. I swallowed my questions, nodding to urge her on.

"As much as we would love to have you, dear, you are not one of them. We think it would be best if you transferred to another loop. One just opened in Cairnholm island, supervised by Miss Alma Peregrine."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LETS GOOOOOOOOOOOO


	3. The Monsters

"I don't think I will, Miss Thrush. As I've said, again and again, my family still wants me. You should tell me how to return."

"Miss Kaffenberg, I hate to be harsh about this...."

"And you needn't be. I understand you perfectly. You, on the other hand, refuse to believe that my family accept what I am, what vile things I can do. I'm not sure how I could be clearer. Now please, for the love of-"

Abruptly, she stood and seized me by the shoulders. Her diminutive height no more, she loomed over me. I was terrified then, making sure I could topple her cane out of reach, or Hell, yank my gloves off, should she decide to strike. 

To my surprise, she instead leaned in conspiratorially, wrinkled mouth brushing against my ear. Her grandmotherly stench, cajuput and talcum powder, crowded my nostrils. The wrought-iron bed frame groaned under our collective weight, for I became her new crutch. 

"I should be keeping this from you, so not a word to Miss Nightjar lest I be stripped of my ymbryne status. We believe your family accepts you, we are not concerned with that. It is the Wights, those cursed creatures that prowl for peculiars, which we are concerned with. You saw one then, when we met, a Wight. You will put your family and yourself in grave danger by returning. You do not want that, I believe," she briskly whispered, uncharacteristically crass.

"Won't they-"

"Quiet down, will you? Nightjar can hear us from a mile away, she is a nocturnal bird."

"Won't they leave eventually? I'm only one peculiar," I relented, whispering back in irk.

"They are numerous, dear. Easily, one of them will wait for you until you cannot rejoin the present without fatally aging forwards. Ever since the day you joined us, I have had to scare the same Wight off of the loop grounds. Give it ten years before he sods off."

The awkward lean had exerted her. She collapsed on the chair with an exhausted outbreath, assuming her earlier demure posture as if she had merely told me the day's forecast (not that weather forecasts mattered where we were). The morning sun had begun to stream in tendrils, putting on Thrush's head a fascinator made of light. 

"Couldn't I keep close at least? Here, with you and Miss Nightjar, o-or somewhere else closer to Swansea? I don't take much space, do I?"

"Three sickly children are on their way here as we speak and all the closer loops are full. Not that it would have much difference, Miss Kaffenberg. You should not contact your family, for fear of misleading them and compromising your security," she said, the paramount order given as easily as raindrops on Saint Swithin's.

"I - miss Thrush, you're saying that I'm to abandon my family." 

"They are doing just fine." 

"You don't know that! My mother is old and my brothers are only bloody sprogs!" 

"Well, what other alternatives do you have in mind, Miss Kaffenberg?" she said at last, callously exasperated.

I stilled, dumbfounded at this strange apathy - was I that detestable of a ward? My throat stung and prickled with the urge to eff and blind at the old bird. Out of unfounded conscience, I averted my gaze to the tattered floorboard to smother it. I couldn't stand her icy face, so unwilling to share the burden she had relayed onto me herself. 

"Listen, dear. I am sorry about everything, I sincerely am. Now, I cannot promise you anything steady, but of course Miss Nightjar and I will aid your mother whenever we can. It is protocol."

I lifted my gaze and saw that Thrush's eyes had softened with something like pity, brows tautly furrowed and lips a clamshell. 

"How much?" I asked wetly.

"20 pounds a month, give or take."

I choked. That was four times what I earned from six months of ballyhooing faux-leather shoes, shouting 'best footwear in Britain! Ladies and gentlemen alike do visit MacQuoid's!' by storefronts like an overgrown paper boy. Thinking about the cursed slogan made my throat burn.

"That's quite generous," I said bashfully, then quickly added a 'thank you'. 

"You are most welcome. Now, I hate to harry you, but you should start gathering your belongings. An ymbryne will arrive sometime today to escort you to Cairnholm. Will the trunk we provided you be sufficient?"

I stole a glance at the small, sad hill of clothes by the foot of the bed. Everything will fit with enough room left for a fat piglet - I had too little things. Tentatively I asked for more clothes to take with me, afraid of overstepping her generosity. She assented, fortunately, telling me when and where to retrieve them and leaving the room with a teacherly 'be punctual for breakfast'.

Then I was alone.


End file.
